Saturday, July 1, 2017

Russian media official who makes $75K per year spent millions on Trump condos

"An official with a Russian state-owned media company has paid millions of dollars for Trump-branded properties in South Florida, despite his five-figure salary. Igor Zorin has bought three condos worth $5.4 million at Trump Palace, a high-end tower built in Sunny Isles Beach by a local developer and branded by Trump Organization, although he has apparently broken Russian law by failing to disclose those purchases, reported the Miami Herald. Zorin, who earns $75,000 a year running a media company that provides sound systems for military parades and broadcasts emergency alerts, still owns two of those Trump condominiums, as well as a $3.3 million home in Bal Harbour, Florida. None of those properties appear in public disclosure forms, the newspaper reported, which would trouble Zorin’s bosses back in Russia, where officials disdain owning property in the U.S. — especially given the current state of relations between the two countries. “It’s like he owned a place in Hell,” said Ilya Shumanov, deputy director of the Russian chapter of the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International. Zorin has business ties in both the U.S. and Russia to Svyatoslav Mangushev, a Russian intelligence officer and Miami real estate investor who helped found a South Florida motorcycle club called Spetsnaz M.C. The club, which includes members of local law enforcement and Russian expatriates, is named for Russia’s elite counterterrorism unit and sought ties to Russia’s infamous “Night Wolves” motorcycle group, which is under U.S. sanctions for taking part in the 2014 Ukraine uprising."